How would you do it?

[Masters, Gary E]

I have just started an assignment to change a web site (for an Intranet) to
add many new links and use buttons and "mouse-overs" to clean up what was
essentially a site map.  One of the best locations I have seen is:

http://nihlibrary.nih.gov/ <http://nihlibrary.nih.gov/> 

This seems to me to be a very clean design.  However, it might not be as
flat as some like.

My next step is to build a database of sites to link to.  I am doing this in
Access and hope to write a finished file to HTML.  The point of a database
is that making a page may be difficult, but keeping it up to date is even
more of a job.  A database might organize sites so they can be reviewed
quickly for important information.  For an example, I have a field for date
last tested.  When I get better with databases, there may be other ways to
automate testing of links.  

The best pages I have seen that manage a large number of links divide them
into categories and make a table of the category headings to put at the top
of the list.  Does anyone know of a better way to do this?  Pull down menus?
Or something new?

I guess a lot of people are managing web sites.  Perhaps it would be useful
to discuss links and managing them in a wider context.
If there are good references, please share them.

Thanks,

Gary Masters